TVA
established small libraries in stores, post offices, even filling
stations. 'Wherever they live or work, said library
supervisor Topie Rothrock, the library follows.

Books
for the People

Libraries
set up to serve TVA dam builders enriched the lives of countless people
in remote communities across the TVA region

Today when
folks check out a copy of the latest John Grisham novel at the local
library, theyre not likely to thank their power company for anything
but the reading lights. But when thousands of people in rural regions
of the
Tennessee Valley region borrowed their first books, it was from a librarian
employed by TVA.

TVA didnt set
out to bring libraries to the people. But in the course of bringing them
electric power, it found that the one happened to follow the other.

After TVAs
inception in 1933, it sent armies of workers into remote areas to build
a power system. Most rural counties in the region had no
public
library, and some were extreme in their isolation.

Counties with populations
in the thousands had no railroad service, no newspaper, no radio station.
It wouldnt be much of an exaggeration to say they had no media
at all, except for the local grapevine.

If TVA employees
were to live happily and productively in such areas for a year or two,
it seemed clear that something would have to change.

Just to maintain
morale, workers would need to have a place to keep up with the latest
exploits of Ruth and Gehrig, a place to sample Hammetts or Hemingways
latest novels, a place to read about new developments in electricity
and
auto mechanics.

To put libraries
in such remote locations seemed an impossible task, but in TVAs
view the more remote the location was, the greater the workers need.

In 1934 TVA found
just the woman to take on the challenge. Her name was Mary Utopia Rothrock,
and she was a firecracker. Born and raised in West Tennessee, Topie, as
her friends and family called her, was a red-haired dynamo.

A graduate of the
New York State Library School, Rothrock was put in charge of Knoxvilles
public library when she was only 26, impressing everyone she met with
her intelligence and bold energy.

In 1930 she had engaged
the conservative mayor of Knoxville in public debate about womens
right to work, insisting that women were better at many jobs than men
were. According to news reports, she left the mayor speechless.

When she was appointed
supervisor of TVA libraries, Rothrock got right to work. She set up the
first rural library in Norris, Tenn., the model company town near
Knoxville that was built to house the workers at Norris Dam. When Watts
Bar Dam was started downstream in Meigs County, TVA built the countys
first library there.

Rothrock agreed
that it was critical to make books available to employees in the most
remote locations. She established small 4,000- to 5,000-volume libraries
in stores, post offices, even filling stations. Wherever they live
or work, she declared, the library follows.

Hardly any TVA librarians
fit the stereotype of the snippish elderly spinster. At the remote work
sites, Rothrock wrote in 1937, almost anyone you meet may be
a librarian, whether he be a postmaster, filling-station operator,
teacher, county
farm agent, safety engineer, forester, saw filer, time checker, or guard.

Saw filers in particular
had a special role on work crews clearing areas for TVA reservoirs. The
saw filer was the keeper of the tool depository, where work implements
were checked out by workers each morning and returned in the evening.

Tools were exchanged
very much like books in a library, a coincidence that didnt escape
the notice of Rothrock and her staff. TVA supply clerks began shipping
waterproof boxes of books to the saw filers, 60 books per box. They
sent all sorts: practical manuals, childrens books, murder mysteries,
classics, tomes about the New Deal.

The librarians assumed
that the workers, whose median educational level was seventh grade, would
be most interested in the how-to manuals. That
type of reading was popular, but novels were much more sonot only
murder mysteries and the latest westerns from Zane Grey (perhaps the favorite
author among TVA crews), but also 18th-century classics like Robinson
Crusoe and Gullivers Travels.

By the late 30s,
TVA was circulating an estimated 13,000 books a month, many of them being
read by people who had not been used to seeing books at all. Topie Rothrock
won the 1938 American Library Associations Lippincott Award for
the most outstanding contribution to librarianship in America, largely
due to her work in the Tennessee Valley region.

By the mid-40s,
most of TVAs construction work was done, but the demand for books
remained. TVA Chairman David Lilienthal lobbied for state support for
the libraries TVA had started. In 1943 Tennessee lawmakers allocated
funding
to continue them; the communities of Guntersville, Ala., and Hiwassee,
N.C., also established permanent libraries.

Rothrock held her
post until 1948 and then returned to work as the most distinguished librarian
in the Knox County system. Just as TVA had hoped, state funding and community
support began to fill the gap in rural library services. Today nearly
everyone in the Tennessee Valley region has ready access to a public library, in many cases
thanks to TVA.

Name
that artifact

The
TVA Historic Collection includes a host of items that reflect
the technological advances of the 20th century. Can you identify
this artifact from the TVA collection?